by Ann Granger
‘Nurse Cooper smelled a rat,’ I said obstinately. ‘So she trotted off to see Flora Wilde and check it all out. If she was right, and Nicola wasn’t legally adopted, there was money in it. Blackmail’s a nasty thing but things hadn’t been going well for LeeAnne. She was short of money. Her marriage had busted up. She’d turned thirty and life was going nowhere. Maybe she thought, hey, these people are living in a pretty expensive part of the world. They won’t miss a couple of thou. I don’t suppose she meant to blackmail them for ever.’
Ganesh took a deep breath. ‘Even if you’re right so far – and it’s all supposition, remember – are you now saying that Nurse Cooper’s disappearance is down to the Wildes?’
‘It has to be, Gan!’
‘No, it doesn’t.’
‘Oh, come off it!’ I argued. ‘I’ve met Flora and Jerry. Flora’s an outright screwball. She’s violent. She knocked me flat on the floor. She tried to beat my brains out with a tin of chickpeas. As for Jerry, he’s more of a thinker and worrier than his wife but I haven’t the slightest doubt there’s absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do to protect Flora and Nicola. In fact, I’m not so sure he didn’t mean to run me down that day he just missed me at the hospice. If I hadn’t thrown myself into the rhododendrons I’d be dead meat right now, and wouldn’t that just suit the Wildes fine!’
‘So,’ asked Ganesh, ‘are you going to the police?’
I sighed and shook my head. ‘No. How can I? As you say, it’s all supposition. I think that either Jerry or Flora killed LeeAnne Cooper. Then Rennie Duke came sniffing round and they killed him. I can’t prove it. Look, I’ve had doubts myself! I’d almost persuaded myself Jerry hadn’t killed Duke, but now . . . LeeAnne Cooper’s got to be dead, Gan. She’s been gone three months without a sign of her anywhere. She disappeared two days after giving that talk at Nicola’s school. I’ve read it all up in Norman’s newspapers. They even mentioned her visit to the school as an example of how she worked with young people. You should see how the press have written this up. They’ve made LeeAnne out to be some sort of saint. Her mother’s been seen on telly pleading for information. Here am I saying she was a blackmailer. Am I going to be popular, I don’t think!’
‘I don’t think you’re very popular with Morgan as it is,’ said Gan.
‘So suppose I tell her all this and she goes to the Wildes and they swear they’ve never set eyes on Nurse Cooper. Oh yes, she came and talked to the school, but that’s it. Who can prove otherwise? What will come out is Nicola’s real identity. I can’t let that happen, Gan.’
Ganesh said carefully, ‘I don’t see how you can prevent it happening, Fran. Inspector Morgan is on the trail of your mother’s other child and she’s got as far as Mrs Marks. As I see it, Mrs Marks is where all this is eventually going to blow sky-high. Think about it from her point of view.’
Ganesh began to tick points off on his fingers. ‘First, Duke contacts her to talk about Eva Varady but doesn’t turn up. Second, the police contact her to talk about Duke. Third, you turn up and want to talk about your mother and Duke. The poor woman’s practically got a queue of people outside that crèche of hers. It’s been made pretty clear to her that she’s sitting on some really explosive information. All right, she didn’t want to get daughter Linda in shtuck so she’s kept quiet till now. But I bet she’s had a long talk with Linda by this time and the two of them are going to end up going to the cops. They’re a law-abiding couple of citizens. They run nice little businesses. No one in business,’ concluded Gan, ‘can afford to upset the police.’
‘So why not just keep quiet?’ I argued. ‘Wouldn’t that suit them better?’
‘Fran,’ he said patiently, ‘we’re talking about people who live well inside the law, not wavering on the edge like a lot of people you and I know. I’m not including Hari in that, by the way. Hari’s so law-abiding they wouldn’t need coppers if everyone was like him. But that’s just what I’m saying. Mrs Marks and Linda are like Hari. They’re honest, hard-working and have consciences. You can bet your life they’re worriers. They are going to spill the beans, sooner or later, take my word for it. What’s more, I reckon it’ll be sooner rather than later.’
‘So what can I do?’ I wailed.
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s just not possible to do anything. Sometimes it’s even worse if you do something than if you don’t. When in doubt, sit tight. It’s the best policy. Face it, if it’s action you want, you’ve got a straight choice. You can go to the police and blow Nicola’s identity, or you can keep shtum, stay here and let Morgan sort it out. It’ll come to the same thing in the end.’ After a moment he added gently, ‘You don’t always have to do everything yourself, Fran. You’re not the world’s fixer.’
‘I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to protect my sister. You’re always telling me how much family matters.’
‘Yes, it does. But I’ve never said families never make problems. You’ve done your best, Fran.’
I sometimes think those words ‘you’ve done your best’ are the bleakest in the language. There’s surrender in them and I’m not a person who gives up. Call me stubborn or what you like, I don’t like being beaten by circumstances. I said as much to Ganesh.
‘You don’t think,’ he asked, ‘that’s a bit arrogant? Thinking you’re the one who can always beat the system?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I just don’t like being beaten by it.’ There was a silence, during which I brooded and Ganesh waited. ‘Poor kid,’ I said eventually. ‘It’s going to be a heck of a shock to her. What will they do? I mean, the police, social services, all the rest of them. Will they take her away from the Wildes and put her in care? She’d hate it. She’s never had to rough it. The other kids in a care home would eat her alive.’
‘They won’t put her in care,’ Gan comforted me. ‘She’s been with the Wildes thirteen years and don’t tell me they can’t afford good lawyers.’
‘They’ll need them if they’re both on a double murder charge. Who’s going to look after her if they’re both in gaol?’ I threw up my hands in despair. ‘That’s it, then. I can’t do anything. I have to sit tight and let matters take their course. I wish I didn’t feel that this is all my fault.’
‘It’s not your fault. Duke was out there looking too. It was Duke who led the police to Mrs Marks, not you.’
‘All the same,’ I told him, ‘I swear this is the last time I’ll ever investigate anything.’
‘If only . . .’ said Gan. He smiled sadly.
It seems hard to understand now, and I can only put my decision down to depression, but it was at that point that I made up my mind I had to accept Norman’s offer of a room – even if only for a short time. I’d already caused Hari so much hassle. If the storm broke over Nicola, it would only get worse. I had to get out of the garage. I trotted round to find Norman.
‘Well,’ he said coyly, ‘I was just about to offer it to someone else, but seeing as it’s you, dear, the room is yours.’
‘I don’t want you to break any arrangements or anything,’ I said hastily, back-pedalling.
‘No, no.’ He held up a hand blackened with newsprint. ‘I always said that room was yours if you needed it. I’m a man of my word.’
‘Norm,’ I ventured, ‘have you done anything about a smoke alarm yet?’
He looked shifty and said he was thinking about it. Right, I thought, if I move in here, my first good deed is going to be fixing a smoke alarm in my room. Norman asked if I wanted to see the room again but I declined. If I took another look at that hole before agreeing, I’d chicken out.
I scraped together the first week’s rent out of my slender funds and then trekked down to the council to report my change in circumstances and apply for housing benefit. I filled in the form and was advised that it would take some time to process and that, even if successful, I should realise I would only receive what was considered ‘eligible’ rent. I would have to meet any difference and they would take into consider
ation the suitability of my accommodation. I assured them the accommodation was neither too generous nor too lavish. Quite the reverse. They still pursed their lips over the amount Norman was charging me and looked doubtful. ‘We’ll let you know.’
I asked how I was supposed to pay the rent meantime. I didn’t think Norman would be charitable indefinitely if I ceased to come across with the rent money. ‘There’s been a lot of fraud,’ they told me. ‘We check everyone carefully now.’ I asked if there was any chance my rent allowance would be back-dated, if and when it was approved. They smiled pityingly. ‘Only in exceptional circumstances. Generally not.’ I guessed I wasn’t exceptional. I was definitely a generally not. Well, I’d have to carry on paying Norman myself for the next few weeks. Perhaps I could give up eating.
So I toiled back to the shop and told them what I’d done.
‘I’ll clear out tonight,’ I promised.
‘What did you do that for?’ asked Ganesh angrily. ‘You can’t live in that place. It’s lethal.’
I assured him I only meant it as a short-term stopgap arrangement. He wasn’t convinced. Neither was I. I had to agree to let him come and inspect the room, though I told him it wouldn’t make any difference, my mind was made up. Ganesh, after one look, insisted on going back to the shop and returning with a bottle of Jif, Hari’s vacuum cleaner and a puffer-tube of Nippon insect-killer. Between us we cleaned the room up. I’d like to say it didn’t look too bad when we’d finished, but I’d be lying. It looked just as awful but a bit shinier and without the fluff under the bed. I suppose it was some consolation that the woodlice would be zapped by the Nippon. Gan fixed the washbasin so it didn’t sag off the wall so badly, then went into the bathroom and had a go at fixing the stuck window there, without much joy.
‘Apparently,’ I told him, ‘there’s a bloke called Sid living up in the attic who’s good at fixing things. I’ll get him on to it.’
‘A nutter in the attic. This place is like a bloomin’ Hammer House of Horror set,’ Ganesh said gloomily. ‘Bet if you go up to the attic you’ll find this Sid dangling from a beam by his toes, waiting for nightfall.’
‘Shut up, Gan,’ I said wearily. Nothing about this was funny. It was as well he hadn’t met Zog.
‘Take you out for a meal,’ he offered. ‘Take you to the Greek place, OK?’
Anything to get out of this hellhole for an evening. I agreed. We carted the vacuum cleaner and the other cleaning materials back to the shop. Hari looked up as we came in and said: ‘There is a message for you, my dear.’
He hunted among various scraps of paper behind the till and produced a piece on which was written what appeared to be a mobile phone number.
‘Did you get a name, Hari?’ The number meant nothing to me. I just hoped it wasn’t Nicola again.
But Hari hadn’t taken down a name, only remembering that the caller had been a man. He had been trying to keep an eye on a suspicious-looking customer at the time.
‘Ten minutes by the magazine rack, looking at everything, buying nothing. I asked him, what you think I am, public library? Then he bought one little pack of cough sweets and went. More customers like him,’ added Hari, ‘and I’m ruined.’
‘Phone from the flat,’ said Gan. ‘I’ll just help Hari finish up down here and I’ll come up and fetch you.’
I toiled up the stairs to their flat, feeling about ninety years old. Ringing a number when you don’t know who’s at the other end is always awkward, and I nearly didn’t do it. There were too many people I didn’t want to talk to. But it had occurred to me it might be Mickey Allerton with some vital piece of information. Not that I wanted it now. Things had slipped out of my hands.
It wasn’t Allerton, it was Ben Cornish.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How are things?’
‘Could be worse,’ I told him, though I didn’t at the moment see how.
‘I thought,’ he said, ‘you might like to come over to Kew Gardens and let me show you round, show you what I’m doing here. If you’re free, of course.’
‘I don’t think I ever want to go near Kew again,’ I said.
‘You won’t see anything of the Wildes. Come on. Anyway,’ he added, ‘to be honest, I thought we might put our heads together and see if we can’t sort something out.’
‘Like what?’ I asked suspiciously, alarm setting my spine a-tingle.
‘Flora’s confided in me,’ he said. ‘I know.’
One more person in the know. They’d be broadcasting my sister’s identity on the Ten O’Clock news next. My heart sank but I wasn’t surprised. I’d confided in Ganesh, Flora in Ben. There comes a moment when we all need the support of a friend.
‘There’s nothing you or I can do,’ I said. ‘You’ve just come into this and you think we can find a way to fix things. I’ve been in it longer and I know there isn’t.’
‘Hey, come on!’ Ben urged. ‘We certainly won’t find a way if you keep that attitude up! Perhaps you just need a fresh point of view, and I can provide that. Come and see what I’m doing at the Gardens, anyway. I’d like to show you.’
I was tempted. I liked Ben, and an afternoon away from it all amongst the lawns and hothouses of Kew would be nice, provided I could make Ben see that we couldn’t prevent the police getting to Nicola eventually. I dithered and made a token effort to refuse again.
‘Well, thanks,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to see my mother tomorrow afternoon.’
‘So come in the morning. We can have lunch in the coffee shop and I’ll drive you down to Egham to see your mother afterwards. I’ll meet you in the Palm House, in the middle, by the spiral stair.’
My first night under Norm’s roof was wretched. I couldn’t sleep. Someone, presumably Norman, was snoring somewhere below me. Boards creaked overhead. Probably Sid, getting ready to go out for a night’s burgling. Zog I knew was out doing his cleaning job. The room was bitterly cold. There was a coin-operated gas fire but I couldn’t afford to keep it burning all night, so I huddled in my sleeping bag on the sagging bed, with Bonnie pressed up tight against my back, and dozed fitfully. In the early hours Zog came home, clumping up the stairs and mumbling to himself. I finally fell asleep about six, which meant I woke up just before nine with a head which felt as if it had been hit with a sock full of sand.
I splashed my face at the washbasin, not surprised to find the hot-water tap was dry. Then Bonnie and I went out shopping for breakfast. I brought back some milk, a packet of cornflakes and a box of teabags. I boiled my little electric kettle to make the tea and we both breakfasted off cornflakes. By this time I was regretting my promise to trail out to Kew Gardens to meet Ben. It would be just my luck to run into Jerry at the Tube station or Nicola with a bunch of her chums. But as I said before, to me a promise is a promise.
I took Bonnie round to the shop and left her in the storeroom again. Poor dog, she must be beginning to think of it as home. Ganesh wasn’t there, he’d gone to see some suppliers, and Hari was busy. I was glad, because I wasn’t in the mood to answer any questions about my first night in my new abode. I waved at Hari and slipped out of the door into the street.
It had been drizzling as I walked to the shop, and now it had started to rain in earnest. Just the day for a stroll round a botanical garden. By the time I got to Kew, the rain had lifted but the sky still lowered greyly, suggesting more rain wasn’t far away.
I entered the Gardens at the Victoria Gate. Not surprisingly, this wasn’t a good day for visitors. The café and shops looked deserted. One or two diehards wandered round in macs or anoraks. A cold breeze blew damply into my face as I set off towards the ornate glass structure of the Palm House. The only happy-looking creatures were the ducks on the pond. Even the line of heraldic beasts rearing up before the Palm House looked cheesed off. I pushed open the door and went inside.
I was met by a cloud of steam and a wall of sweltering heat. From a drizzling London I’d been transported into some tropical jungle. Rampant greenery burst out everywhere
and reached up to the glass roof, pressing against the panes as if it would escape and, like Jack’s beanstalk, go on growing up into the clouds and out of sight. With a hissing noise a fine spray of water issued from hidden nozzles amongst the leaves and settled in droplets of moisture in the suffocating air. I made my way down the paths between the beds and found myself by the white-painted spiral staircase. I couldn’t see anyone else around. A pair of slat-seated benches set at right angles to one another formed a cosy conversation corner – if anyone could bear to sit and talk, or even just sit and look for long in these sauna-like conditions. I sat down. After a minute I had to take my puffa jacket off. I’d suffer some form of heatstroke if I didn’t.
I’d just done this when Ben appeared, strolling towards me in a sweater and body-warmer, looking as cool as a cucumber.
‘How do you stick it?’ I asked him.
‘Got used to it. I shan’t be working here much longer anyway. This is my last week. I’ve done all the research I wanted. Now I’ve got to go away and write it up.’ He sat down on the other seat and leaned his forearms on his knees. ‘You look a bit stressed out,’ he said. ‘It’s not that bad.’
